NOVUM ORGANUM 275 



occur (after a larger time) in a plate of steel, which does 

 not evaporate. If the experiment of simple perseverance 

 should fail, the matter should not be given up, but other 

 means should be employed. For it would be no small ad 

 vantage, if bodies could be endued with fixed and constant 

 natures by violence. Air could then be converted into 

 water by condensation, with other similar effects; for man 

 is more the master of violent motions than of any other 

 means. 



3. The third of our seven methods is referred to that 

 great practical engine of nature, as well as of art, cold 

 and heat. Here, man s power limps, as it were, with one 

 leg. For we possess the heat of fire, which is infinitely 

 more powerful and intense than that of the sun (as it 

 reaches us), and that of animals. But we want cold, 92 ex 

 cept such as we can obtain in winter, in caverns, or by 

 surrounding objects with snow and ice, which, perhaps, 

 may be compared in degree with the noontide heat of the 

 sun in tropical countries, increased by the reflection of 

 mountains and walls. For this degree of heat and cold 

 can be borne for a short period only by animals, yet it 

 is nothing compared with the heat of a burning furnace, 

 or the corresponding degree of cold. 93 Everything with us 

 has a tendency to become rarefied, dry and wasted, and noth- 



92 Heat can now be abstracted by a very simple process, till the degree of 

 cold be of almost any required intensity. Ed. 



}3 It is impossible to compare a degree of heat with a degree of cold, without 

 the assumption of some arbitrary test, to which the degrees are to be referred. 

 In the next sentence Bacon appears to have taken the power of animal life to 

 support heat or cold as the test, and then the comparison can only be between 

 the degree of heat or of cold that will produce death. 



The zero must be arbitrary which divides equally a certain degree of heat 

 from a certain degree of cold. Ed. 



